Writing Projects

I pulled the Monsterville posts because I think I'd like to actually make that into a novel. I've been filling in with Remant, who I mostly write as an episodic adventurer with really bad PTSD. I'm also in the process of proofing something I wrote back in 2003 -- the pulp Wuxia Cyberpunk Fantasy Adventure -- with the goal of at least getting it self-published. It was a fun project, and very much representative of where my mind was at the time. 

I also have the Gravedigger project, which I'll come back to at some point. I need to take a better look at its pacing. 

Finally, I just caught up with the most recent book of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, which is the first thing in a long time that's actually got me writing fan-fiction. Not sure how far I'll take that, because if I stay true to the timeline of the source material it either becomes tragedy or it comes to an unsatisfying conclusion where the protagonists depart the battlefield before the battle is done. That's the ending I'm leaning towards, but it's... I don't know. Open to change. The teenage students might force it into becoming a tragedy. 

Anyway, I hope all my readers are doing well, and I'll likely pick back up with Remant next. He's a blog-project, not a book-project, so he gets some slack. 

Writer's Block

So yeah, writing -- even low-stakes writing for the Blog o' Doom here -- hasn't been going well lately. This is not a huge surprise; I've mentioned before that May is basically the worst month of the year for me. Sometime I cope with that by writing more, but I've been trying to take a sensible, low-stress approach this year and...

...Well, frankly I think I'm just extremely burned-out. I think I have been for some time, and when I finally made a real effort to slow down it all caught up with me. And there's not much to be done about that except keep trying to take things slow and sensible until I get back to feeling like myself. 

Things are going to be a little slow around here, is what I'm saying. They should get better -- I should get better -- once we're done with May, but in the meantime I'm just going to try to get through without burning out completely the way I usually do. 

See you on the other side, friends.

Kitchen Sink Syndrome

A little while back, I was thinking about an old writing project, with the working title of "Random High Fantasy", so I went and dug it back out... I then spent a solid four hours re-reading it, tweaking some of the original sections, adding some new sections, and generally wondering why I'd ever abandoned it in the first place. So now I guess I know what my next project will be once I finish the Dark Fantasy project that I'm working on currently. 

And, actually, I know exactly why I abandoned it in the first place. It's because midway into it I got one of those Really Neat Ideas and started trying to bend the existing story to incorporate it, and the existing story didn't have that much flex. Really Neat Idea needs to be the basis for a sequel, not Kitchen-Sinked into this project. Kitchen-sunk? Whatever. Certainly sunk my first attempt.

Looking back at my attempts at actually finishing a book-length project, I think that Kitchen Sink Syndrome is actually one of my big stumbling blocks. I'll be working on something, and I'll get a neat new idea, and I'll try to work it in... and the next thing you know, I have too many new ideas and can't figure out how to work them all in (which was what happened to the last Dark Fantasy project) or I'm trying to squeeze in something that just doesn't fit (e.g. Random High Fantasy) or I actually do just cram them all in there and wind up with a bloated, sprawling fantasy adventure that has a lot of neat stuff but has really lost its focus as a story (for example, the one book-length project I actually did finish, and for which this blog is named). 

Honestly, if there's one big issue that I need to work on in my writing, it's that. I've gotten a little better about it -- both recognizing when I'm doing it, and then not doing it -- but it's still something I need to work on. And the big thing that helps is to remember that I can take a break, write the new idea out, maybe even put down a scene or two to flesh it out and nail it down... and then promise it that it will get its own home someday, and go back to what I was doing. 

Feels weird to be figuring that out after this many years spent writing, but I guess that's true of any sort of artistic creation: there's always more to learn, and a lot of it is going to be learning about yourself as much as your craft.

Sisyphus was an amateur

So on Sunday I spent five and half hours running laundry, sorting laundry, and putting away laundry -- while also wrangling Secondborn into cleaning the nightmarish hellscape that was the floor of his room. 

The laundry pile is now three times the size it was before I started this. Apparently me trying to get rid of the pile serves as some sort of cosmic cue telling people to go and find dirty laundry and come add it to the pile. Either that, or it sensed its eminent demise and began breeding. 

Work is picking up the pace again, as we prepare to go live with a new payroll system at the end of the year. (This is the same one we tried to go live with last year, before backing off at the last minute.) Apparently our project leads have only just remembered that the payroll system doesn't pull everything from the financial system, and that we're going to have to set up user rights and approval workflows and suchlike for the payroll system independently. Which... a lot of that is still in place from last year, but we've had a lot of turnover and a lot of it is probably wrong. That's failing to mention some other significant changes, like an entire group moving from one department to an entirely different department. 

Still no word on my job reclassification, though. It's gone up the approval chain, and apparently just... stopped there. Admittedly, some delay is understandable what with our office catching fire, but from where I'm sitting it feels like they're just deliberately stringing me along. There's really nothing about this process that should be this difficult. 

Writing is... honestly, I'm not sure. I hit a point on Thursday or Friday night where I suddenly had doubts about the way I was handling a major plot element. I'd felt like the project was coming along pretty well until then, and at this point between work stress and general existential malaise, I'm honestly not sure whether to trust that feeling or not. I may try writing out an alternate opening where two of my characters figure something out much earlier in the story, just to see how it grabs me; I might just keep going with this version, with an eye towards fixing that issue in revision (if I still think it needs fixing, then). The one thing I am sure of is that I have no sense of perspective right now. 

More sleep, more exercise, less alcohol, better eating habits. Yeah. That's still the plan. Onwards and upwards, my friends. Nothing but good times ahead.

The Hell Did January Go?

Right, January just up and buggered off on me, or at least that's the way it feels. It's actually been pretty stressful, though not directly horrible: getting the boys back into school (no boosters yet, plenty of COVID reports, no good alternatives), trying to get through some projects at work, waiting to see if work is going to actually update my job description to describe my fucking job, mostly not getting any writing done because by the time I finish the day I'm pretty wiped, trying to keep up with dishes and laundry and etc. before the house implodes, and trying to figure out how (and if) we can get back to the youth Dungeons and Dragons game in the middle of a massive surge of "milder" COVID that, um, ain't all that fucking mild and may have long-term health effects that the media seems to be essentially ignoring. Yeah. 

I do have a solution for that last one: we'll be playing online next weekend. Now I just need to remember where we were, and prep for it. 

The last of major SQL transfers is coming up this week, but it's A) the one most likely to go horribly wrong, B) the one where I don't have a good way to try it out using the test environment, and C) the one most likely to scream if things stay down too long. (It's also the system that's going to have to get shut down again so I can finally upgrade it so I can finally go back to setting up one of its components, but that can wait.) 

On the plus side, I did finally manage to do a little bit of writing this weekend. More importantly, I got a huge amount of sleep which I was desperately overdue for. I'm not exactly back on schedule, metabolically speaking, but I'm a lot closer than I have been so far this year. I've managed to get back to practicing in DuoLingo -- erratically, but again it's a start. Or a restart. Whatever. And I finally took the CPAP machine down and did a bunch of maintenance on it that I should have done months ago -- and found that they'd sent me the wrong replacement mask, so I'm going to have to do something about that. 

It's always something, isn't it? 

Anyway, it's Tuesday. Time to spread your wings, shake out those lovely sharp-tipped scales, sharpen your claws and fangs, and go out and drown the countryside in fire and slaughter until the humans bring the tributes and sacrifices you demand. Don't feel guilty about it! A being of your ruthless magnificence deserves this sort of treatment!

Dark Armor: Writing Considerations

This isn't going quite as I'd envisioned it, either. 

I mean, I don't think it's horrible. I don't even think it's uninteresting. It's just... not going quite where I want it go. I'd have to force it to get back there, back to the beats I want to hit and the progression I want work through. 

In the first version, Pallian would have slain his brother Ravaj, freed the Shadow of Edrias, and then returned to his father's citadel and tried to keep both betrayals a secret. I'm not sure quite where that would have led, but it wasn't where I was aiming for. (Might have been an interesting story in its own right, though.) 

In this version, Pallian gets captured and his father's response brings home to him that he can't continue to serve as his father's champion, and as a result likely can't remain in his father's court. Also a potentially interesting story, but again not building towards the things I want out of this particular bit of writing.

So now I'm wondering whether to continue this anyway, just for the sake of making progress and seeing where it goes, or stop here and start again with version three after making a couple of fundamental changes to the background and setup.

Version Three would have Pallian -- or rather, the Black Knight -- taking more of a command role: publicly advising his brother on strategy, leading troops rather than riding off on his own, and encountering the Champion of Edrias on the battlefield rather than in passing behind the lines. I think it would work better for what I want, but I may actually have to start writing it that way to find out. 

Thoughts?

Comes the Crash

I woke up yesterday morning and then realized that I just couldn't. Not illness, I don't think -- just exhaustion. It's the end of the semester for both the boys (who I think officially finish next week) and Beautiful Wife, who turned in the last of her grading yesterday. That's always a rough time of year, but of course we've got the soft quarantine and economic collapse coming now; plus I kept trying to work on things after the boys went to bed. And I had a couple of things earlier in the week that made for some longer-than-usual workdays.

I should know better by now.

Anyway I called in, went back to bed for half the day, and then worked the other half from home to keep everything going at work. My timer suggests that I slept for about ten and a half hours, all told. Got a little less sleep last night than I should have, but it was solid and I feel a lot better.

I want to start picking the fictions up again on here -- or at least one of them. (If you've got a preference between Into The Black and Dark Armor, let me know in the comments. No promises, though.)

More than that, though I want to go back to a longer writing project and try to really focus on it -- as in set aside some time each night and forbid interruptions. Unfortunately, that requires getting everybody back on a real schedule, and that isn't going to be easy. (We're close, but it's slipped from 8:30 bedtime to a 9:30 bedtime. It's hard to explain why they have to get up at 6:30 in the morning if they don't have to go anywhere and don't really settle in for their school work until about 8:00.)

So, yeah, sleep: sleep is good. I may still run out of energy after lunch, but I'm feeling so much better this morning. Sleep is good.

Reading Old Scraps

I've spent a portion of this evening reading scraps of my old writing. It's... interesting. A lot of different stories that I started and then abandoned for one reason or another. Some of them could be salvaged; others, well, I'm not sure I could find the voice I was using when I first attempted them.

Here's one of them. It was actually a community-chosen story -- sort of like a Choose Your Own Adventure, but by committee -- so at the end of each section I'd put up a poll to see what people would choose next. I don't really have that capacity here on the Blog o' Doom, but if you want me to pursue something say so in the comments.

---

For a long time, there is nothing but darkness and silence. Then, slowly, the emptiness fills with light and sound, a bright and melodic beauty that fades almost before you become aware of it. You open your eyes to an arched ceiling high overhead, curving smoothly down to meet with the walls. A shiver runs down your back, and you realize that you're lying on cold stone -- some sort of table or altar.

Ceiling, walls, floor, and altar; all are white marble, shot through with veins of gold. There is light, more than enough for you to see, but it seems to come from everywhere. If there are any sort of blocks or joints in the stone, you can't see them. The whole room might have been carved from the heart of a single piece of stone.

You don't recognize the place. You're not sure if you just woke up; it doesn't feel like you've been asleep, and anyway the last thing you remember is that vague impression of light and... was it a song? And who would sleep naked in a place like this?

The stone is still cold, so you lower your feet to the floor. There, in front of the altar, is a crumpled figure. It is small and lean, lying face down and unmoving. Its white robe blends with the marble floor, and its arms are flung out in a way that looks awkward and uncomfortable.

At the far end of the room are three passageways. Squinting, you can make out the shapes at the far end of each: three low pillars, each with something on top of it. The passage on the left leads to the pillar that holds a book. The passage in the center leads to the pillar that holds a sword. The passage on the right leads to the pillar that holds a small statue in dark stone of some four-legged beast. At the foot of each pillar sits a pile of something that might be clothing, or armor, or both.

You are cold and shivering.

Do you...

...Follow the passage to the pillar with the book?
...Follow the passage to the pillar with the sword?
...Follow the passage to the pillar with the beast statue?
...Check on the figure on the floor?

Okay, what if he's just there?

I keep coming back to the book about the necromancer and the plague, even though it's been frustrating me for years now. I have so much of it clear in my head: my protagonist, the various antagonists, a wide variety of supporting casts and backstories, the world in general and several specific settings.

What I don't have, what I'm not sure I've ever really had, is an actual story.

I think that's because I want to do too much with it. As much as I love the world and the characters and the basic conflict, I also have -- and love -- a whole host of specific moments, and I don't think I can set up all of them in the same timeline. (Author Sam Sykes wrote a novella just so he could have a scene where someone gets beaten to death with a bucket full of human waste, and I really understand how a writer could find himself in that sort of situation...) (Fun book, by the way, if you like that sort of thing.)

I want the part where the main character slipped away from his friends and has basically been in hiding for a year, just so he wouldn't have to be reunited with his family. I want the part where he's using necromancy to stop a plague, because magically reanimated corpses are effectively embalmed and don't spread germs. I want the part where, spell-speech aside, he doesn't have any powers; I also want him to have powers. (But, y'know, maybe later on in the story? Or in the series?) I want him to explore the moral implications of having enormous power, but maybe not yet. I want him to be helping a group of kids with serious ambitions, but I also want him to have the kind of nightmares that crawl off and endanger other people. I don't think those two things can happen at once. There's a possible version/piece of the story where he winds up helping the city watch because the creatures that are attacking people are the same creatures he used to have nightmares about, but that requires an entirely different opening and an entirely different storyline.

I'm going to have to kill some of these visions, and probably put stakes through their hearts, cut their heads off, and fill their mouths with garlic. I can't do all of this, not in one story.

But I think I might have found a way to do most of it.

I think so, but we'll see.

Into the Black Commentary 001

So, I wrote this on Saturday when I was half-soused and apparently thinking, I know, I'll write a space opera! I should totally be able to do that without any sort of plan!

...And it kind of shows.

I mean, okay, "Jeremy"? Why "Jeremy"? Why isn't he using some sort of call-sign, as the other fighter apparently is? And why is he hauling on a manual control lever for a space ship? Shouldn't he be using some sort of neural interface or something?

And if we're at the level of fighting aliens equipped with plasma cannons, who the hell is coating their ships in ablative armor? And why are the undefended aliens dumb enough to follow him into the atmosphere at speed?

Seriously, what was I thinking?

Oh, well. Back to Take Two on the Heroes Are Assholes story. At least I know how that one's supposed to play out.

Also? Note to self: alcohol isn't necessarily a bad thing when writing, but it sure as hell doesn't make up for lack of sleep.

Sleep.

Writing Advice: Just Sleep

So, I made myself a little sign to put on the wall in my, um, office. (Read: closet.) It's not the be-all and end-all of writing advice, but I think it's something that needs to be firmly in my head, so putting it where I'll read it over and over seems like a good way to drill it in.

Ideas vs. Execution

A few weeks back, another author challenged me to actually write a story idea I've been kicking around for years - something related to a Twitter observation that she'd made. I figured, with my schedule, that would take maybe three weeks, depending on how long the story decided to be. That was, I don't know, at least six weeks ago.

I actually got (what I think is) a really good opening, then got bogged down on the next section, and then the world fell on my head with work, family issues, and general exhaustion. I have tried to keep going on it; I have tried cleaning up the troublesome section; I have tried setting aside the troublesome section and rewriting from the end of What I Think Is A Really Good Opening. But I think I'm back to the same problem that I have with pretty much all my writing projects:

I let myself get too tired.

I let myself get too tired, and then I try to keep pushing, and then I'm even more tired, and eventually I hit a point where at the end of the day I'm completely useless but I can't seem to let go and just Get Some Rest like a sensible person who realizes that they're tired. Like, I know it's a problem, I know exactly how to solve it, but I just can't seem to get myself to do it.

Changing habits is hard, y'all.

But I guess the solution there is, do it anyway.